


hiraeth

by AncientBow (MagitekUnit05953234)



Category: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Early in Canon, Fate & Destiny, Gen, Homesickness, Introspection, References to Depression, This fic is just Link being kinda sad the whole time and that's it, Video Game Mechanics, Vignette, probably not canon divergent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-30
Updated: 2019-01-30
Packaged: 2019-10-19 06:57:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17596598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagitekUnit05953234/pseuds/AncientBow
Summary: Live… and someday save the world. Someday stop the suffering of the people of Hyrule. Someday become someone who matters. Someone who Link once was, apparently.He doesn't know that person.He doesn't know if hewantsto know that person.He will have to become him eventually.





	hiraeth

**Author's Note:**

> (n.) a homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your past

Link has a feeling that he used to like nights like these. He doesn't have any recollection of actually doing it, but there's something inside him that just _says so_. Inexplicable yet certain. Most feelings he gets these days are that way.

This probably is a nice night to anyone with a proper roof over their heads and lanterns and walls to keep out the monsters. It’s just the right side of hot and a little breezy, and a light drizzle keeps the stone cliffs and caverns of Hyrule just a bit too slick to traverse with confidence. Sunset fireflies wink above the dewy grass and through the whispering trees, making everything feel a touch otherworldly.

Link has a feeling he used to like nights like these, but he knows that they do him no favors now.

Tonight, Link sits under a rocky overhang that lies between the Shrine of Resurrection and what was once, apparently, the Temple of Time. Or _a_ Temple of Time. Link doesn’t know if it was the only one or if it is part of a group of lost religious buildings. If he knew at one point, he does no longer.

It's just a crumbling mess, now. No one prays there except Link, sometimes. On the worse days.

Water drips down from the edge of the outcropping, each drop splashing onto the soggy ground with a little _plip_. Link watches it for a while, much preferring it to the sight of the skeletal stalkoblins clawing out of the ground and roving the hills in search of… something. People to kill, maybe.

There is certainly better shelter than this that Link could find. He doesn't have the money for a proper bed at a stable, but the temple has enough of a roof in places to protect him from the rain. The towers do as well. The shrines, too.

He _could_ sleep in any of those places but… he doesn't. There’s something about the ancient holy places that make something within Link twist and rattle within his ribs. Something itch under his skin. It’s as if his very presence there calls the eyes of the world upon him, and every entity that has him pinned under its gaze is urging him: _forward, faster ever faster, obey the call of fate, cut down the Blight, do not stand idle, do not rest, forward, faster._

Link has not made his way to Kakariko Village yet. He has not made his way to Hateno. He has spent his days wandering the Great Plateau and the Faron Grasslands and Necluda, gathering his meals from the land when he has to and doing odd jobs to buy real meals when he can. Right now, he has a grand total of two rupees to his name after stocking up on arrows from the perpetually nervous traveling salesman who’s recently set up shop at Riverside Stable.

Watching the rain loses its allure after one does it for more than two minutes at a time. Link shakes the haze from his skull and digs through his bag, thanking his good fortune that the firewood he left here the last time he came around is both untouched and dry. He uses a stick to scrape out some red chuchu jelly from the persistently warm vial he keeps tucked in a padded pocket of his bag and carefully lays it down in an open spot of the wood he has arranged. He holds his breath as he brings a small rock down on the stick, hoping that he hasn't used enough jelly to make this explode in his face.

Good fortune once again blesses him. The jelly lights with little fanfare, and with time Link has a happily crackling fire warding away the dark. He drops a slab of raw meat —once wrapped in brown paper chilled with white chuchu jelly and now soon to be Link’s dinner— directly into the flames and watches the meat sizzle in the heat. He keeps a keen ear on it as he braves the night rain for a few damp seconds in order to pluck a ripe apple from the tree outside.

It’s not the best meal, Link thinks as he scrapes away the bits of the meat that are too charred to eat, but it keeps him alive. That’s about all he can motivate himself to do these days. Live… and someday save the world. Someday stop the suffering of the people of Hyrule. Someday become someone who matters. Someone who he once was, apparently.

He doesn't know that person.

He doesn't know if he _wants_ to know that person.

He will have to become him eventually.

For now, he eats his meal and waits for the sunrise.

~

There are some days that Link turns weak. He can't bear the feeling of sleeping on stone or grass or on the low branches of sturdy trees. He yearns for creature comforts that he can't remember ever having.

He wants a place to call home. A little house, just for him. A mattress to sleep on, a candle to light on the windowsill, a door to lock out the outside world.

Link can’t have any of those things. He is supposed to go to the villages and learn about the Hero he once was, and then he is supposed to save the kingdom. That is all. There is no place in that for Link’s weary head and tired body. There is no place for him to find a home. He must rescue the princess. He must follow the prophecy. He must, he must, he must…

Link climbs to the top of the Temple of Time on those weak days. It feels like he can see the whole of Hyrule from there. He perches on the southernmost reach of the roof and just looks at it all.

There is the Bridge of Hylia. There is the Dueling Peaks. There is Death Mountain and Lake Tower and the Nette Plateau. Everything looks shiny-new and unexplored under the light of the setting sun. Someday, Link thinks, he will go to each of those places.

But that is not today. Today, Link leaps from that place on the roof and extends his paraglider above him, arms already shaking a little with the strain. He tightens his grip on the handles and does what he can to direct his descent, heart pounding the way it always does when he plummets from such a tall place like this. The wind roars in his ears, his hair whips around his face, and he feels breathless with the knowledge that nothing would save him if he were to fall.

He stumbles to his feet outside a sturdy woodsmans’ cabin and throws the paraglider to the ground, pacing uneasily around the cabin to dispel the anxious energy teeming in his bones. When he thinks about the massive height he just traversed with nothing but his own strength to keep him alive, he gags a little in a shock of belated panic. He suspects that he may have been afraid of heights once. He doesn't have that luxury anymore, but on occasion it still strikes him.

When Link is properly calm and has his bearings returned to him, he furtively ducks into the cabin and sets his bag down at the foot of the bed. He cannot help feeling like a trespasser here, despite the fact that the only man he knew that lived here was in fact dead and had been for quite some time. This is not Link’s home. This is not Link’s house. He should not be staying here.

He stays here, on the weak days.

He lays his sword and shield, battered to near-uselessness, on the floor just under the bed, ready to be taken up in the event that a monster, bandit, or other ne’er-do-well tries to accost Link in his sleep. He stows the Sheikah Slate on the main table beside the diary the old man left behind with its ink sun-faded. He hangs his cloak on from the low center beam of the roof. He lights the sole lantern on the inside of the cabin, and the two outside as well.

On the weak days, Link sleeps here. He curls under the covers of the bed shoved in the corner of the cabin like an afterthought and plays pretend, childish though it may be to do so. Maybe he is a hunter, making a living from selling meats and furs to the townspeople in the lands beyond. Maybe he is a woodsman, building his own shelter and making his own fires. Maybe he is simply a young man with his whole life ahead of him, with no deities to tell him what kind of life that is supposed to be. Maybe he is just a person, who can do what he wants and who can live as he chooses.

He daydreams and feels so, so alone.

But every once in a while, after Link crawls out from under blankets he has no claim to, refreshed after a long rest he has no right to take, there are a few apples on the table. A new ax propped against the wall. A half dozen peppers tucked into the pots in the corner. Link stares at it all, eyes darting around the familiar and false home he’s stealing from a man he thinks he never truly met and feels, for a few precious moments, that maybe somebody out there really is looking out for him. Just him, not the Hero.

On those mornings, he smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first BOTW fic I have ever written. I enjoyed writing it, strange as it may be.


End file.
